Alibi Volume 20, Number 26

June 30, 2011

The children of Cuidando los Niños

By Whitny Doyle

A soft-spoken young woman in a button-up shirt and black slacks bows her head. “Ya’at’eeh,” she says quietly in Navajo, then switches to English. “I became a mother at age 17,” begins Reina. She now has three young daughters.

Guv-appointed commission yanks New Mexico’s support for wolf reintroduction

By Christie Chisholm

The state’s Game Commission voted unanimously to withdraw from the reintroduction effort. Gov. Susana Martinez appointed four new members to the six-member board in March. Bill Montoya is one of those new members. “It was costing us a lot of money,” says Montoya, who worked for the Game and Fish Department for 28 years. “We didn’t think we were going in the right direction.”

I got an inquiry from Paul Gessing of conservative nonprofit the Rio Grande Foundation. He wanted to know: Would I be willing to go head-to-head against global warming skeptic Pat Michaels about manmade climate change on KKOB? I was intrigued.

Law enforcement think tank weighs in on APD’s shootings

By Marisa Demarco

A 91-page report spurred by the Albuquerque Police Department's spate of shootings was released on Friday, June 24. Among the findings: Violent crime and assaults on officers decreased over the last few years, but the number officer-involved shootings went up. The report also shows that the same officers are repeatedly involved in violent incidents, with 22 percent having a hand in 60 percent of such encounters.

Congolese gangster flick shot through with sex and violence

By Devin D. O’Leary

It’s not every day you see a film from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In fact, in all my years of sitting up, taking nourishment and watching a lot of movies, I’ve never stumbled across a Congolese film. Despite its seemingly exotic country of origin, however, Viva Riva! is hardly an unfamiliar product.

The Week in Sloth

The Alibi’s Group Hug greases up

By Jessica Cassyle Carr

This month, Alibi Group Hug is celebrating that rebellious marriage of early rhythm and blues with country and Western music. Despite being a nascent form of rock and roll, rockabilly, and its wild, raw, reverberating energy, has endured for six decades. On Saturday, an assembly of New Mexico’s most rockabilly-est citizens will provide their sonic services at the Launchpad.

Le Tigre and feminism

By Marisa Demarco

The nihilistic party of pop and subpop culture rages on. Someone knocked over the lamp, and it sure is dark in here. The embers of lit cigarettes wink in the black. One such ember, Le Tigre, wants to make sure you don't forget. About them. About feminism. About gender-fucking. You know, but with, like, beats and shit.

Cleveland rapper Scott Mescudi (aka Kid Cudi) has been pioneering a style of emotionally raw, singsongy hip-hop ever since the release of his 2008 mix tape, A Kid Named Cudi. His songs are club-friendly, life-celebratory anthems just as often as they are meditative stoner jams. On Saturday, June 25, the man who moonlights as "Mr. Rager" played a show for more than 6,500 folks at Hard Rock Pavilion. The Alibi was there to photograph the event.

Shows worth attending this week are many, but space and time prevents me from giving them all the attention they deserve. Music editor Jessica Cassyle Carr tips her newspaper hat to some personally appealing selections.

In light of the fact that parts of the state are on fire, consider not celebrating America with explosives this year. "It just takes that one bottle rocket, that one match, to take out an entire community," Bernalillo County Fire Chief John Garcia told KRQE. Support the boycott here: on.fb.me/fireworksnm. (Jessica Cassyle Carr)

A painter’s prickly obsession

By Summer Olsson

Eason Eige has been painting the same subject for six years. Like many artists, he has expressed his fascination with, and perception of, his muse in series after series. But what makes Eige a bit different from the others is that his model isn’t a person. It’s a cactus. Specifically, it’s the prickly pear growing in front of San Felipe de Neri, the church in Old Town’s plaza. When the Alibi called to learn more about The Black Series, his upcoming show at the Bright Rain Gallery, Eige was at home, working on a painting he started in front of the church the day before.

Early birds and late-bloomers in the North Valley

By Ari LeVaux

Throughout the growing season, New Mexico is home to fresh food markets every day of the week. You can follow the progression of summer by watching the diversity of produce unfold like a kaleidoscope on vendors’ tables. And you can travel to markets around the state and marvel at the differences that elevation and latitude make in what can be grown.

Green living sprouts up from the concrete

By Mina Yamashita

The Urban Store has been open since January and is the brainchild of Kathy Isaacson and co-owner Chuck Alex. The Nob Hill shop, on Silver, is deceptively ordinary. Issacson sports a T-shirt bearing the store’s working philosophy—“grow, eat, return.” How simple is that?

ARIES (March 21-April 19): When astronaut Buzz Aldrin flew to the moon and back on the spacecraft Apollo 11 in 1969, he was paid less than $8 a day. That has to stand as one of the most flagrant cases of underpaid labor ever—far worse than what you've had to endure in your storied career. I suggest you keep Aldrin's story in mind during the next six months as you meditate steadily on the future of your relationship with making money. Hopefully it will help keep you in an amused and spacious and philosophical frame of mind—which is the best possible attitude to have as you scheme and dream about your financial master plan for the years ahead.